Clarissa Lincoln is a martini glass half full type. Heck, even when she slurps the last bits of icy vodka from the glass, she'll tell you it's plumb full!
Until a disaster of a night on New Year's Eve sends the daydreaming, serial dater spiraling as...
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I'm leisurely enjoying my coffee Saturday late morning when a knock at the door interrupts my peaceful moment. I'm surprised to find my landlord and the maintenance man with a big box outside in the hallway.
"What is going on?" I ask as I take a small step back.
"You called about your dishwasher being broken," my landlord, Tom, says. He's a short guy, not even five feet, and his hair is dusty grey and thinning majorly; he has one of those pinched-up faces like he frowned too much in his life. "Here to replace it."
"Replace it?" I question as I make a way to allow them in.
"Those old models are crap. As soon as they stop working, we swap them out." The maintenance guy says as he hauls the box in. I think he's Tom's brother because he looks just like him but bigger and a little less pinched.
So I didn't do it, and they aren't mad at me. Darn, as soon as it stopped working, I should have just called... Melanie was right.
"Do I need to do anything?" I ask as they
"No, go about your day. Shouldn't take long," the guy says.
I leave them to it, grab my phone, duck into the bathroom, to call Melanie while I prepare for the day.
"Did you call my landlord?" I ask the second she answers.
"Yes, because you were never going to. Are they fixing it?"
"Better replacing it, thanks Mel."
"Stop being so weird about calling about stuff like that."
"I'm just glad I did my dishes last night when I got back from Conner's."
"Conner's... so you had your first date. How'd it go?"
"Actually, it didn't. Katie took my black dress, and then Diane made me stay late and —"
"Stop letting Diane walk all over you! And what do you mean Katie took your dress?"
"It's a long story, and it's fine. I ran into Conner at the grocery store, and he ended up making us some steaks while we talked out how this is going to work."
"A game plan is a good idea," Melanie says slowly. "...but, you had dinner with him at his place?"
"A business dinner, and we went to his place because he lives across the street from the grocery store. He caught me trying to spend my date money on steaks."
Melanie laughs. "Of course, you tried to do that."
"It was a good dinner. We filled three notebook pages with date ideas, and two with random facts and stuff about me," I explain as I head to my closet to rummage for the day's fit. "Conner is going to plan all the dates, so we went over things to give him stuff to use."
